Spirals
by Rhythm and Blues
Summary: Five things that never happened.


**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, UPN and WB Television Networks own the television shows, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

_Spirals_

* * *

When Buffy finds out that the annoying little girl in the room next to hers isn't her sister – or even a little girl at all – the first person she talks to is Giles. The second is Angel.

She likes to make her friends think that she has nothing to do with Angel anymore, and she knows Riley would be somewhat understandably upset if he knew, but she calls L.A. anyway and asks him if he remembers her sister. Because she wants to know just how far-reaching the monks' powers are and because she misses the lilting, grainy-smooth sound of his voice.

"Dawn?" he asks. "Of course. Is she in trouble?"

_Yes._ "No, no. Just… Ask the others if they remember her too for me, would you?"

"Alright," Angel says. Then he's met with a dial tone that goes on and on.

He asks Cordelia – who laughs a little, shakes her head, but says yes – and Wesley – who scowls and nods – and prepares to call Buffy back before he pauses and gets into his car.

He parks in the visitors' area and gets through all the appropriate channels and waits with a receiver in his hand and his eyes glued to glass. After a while, Faith shuffles in and picks up her own receiver, looking haunted and a little disheveled. He wants to say something that she'll snort at and call cliché, but that wasn't his purpose for coming here, so he figures that can wait.

"What's up, big guy?" she asks, which only serves to make him that little bit more concerned. Faith hasn't been in prison for that long – maybe five months, although it feels like less. She has her good days and her bad days, and he's learned quickly that a good indicator of her mood is keeping close attention to what she calls him. _Big guy_ usually means she's thinking about the brief period of grief and fear between the death of her watcher and Sunnydale, a time in her life she's spoken about sparingly.

"Dawn. Do you remember her?"

_**-:-:-:-**_

Dawn is eleven and still young enough for her curiosity to be considered cute rather than annoying when Buffy brings the other slayer over for dinner. She doesn't know exactly what to expect, but after living her whole life with Buffy and hearing from Willow about the by-the-book slayer who came right after, the dark, wild girl who shows up is exactly what she _didn't_ expect. She just sits and listens to the conversation for a while before her mom and Buffy head into the kitchen, leaving her and the new girl alone together.

The wild slayer – Faith, Buffy had called her, which was about as hopeless a name a _Buffy_, in Dawn's opinion – glances at Dawn for a second before eating food straight out of the serving dishes and even off Buffy's plate.

It takes Dawn a second to build up courage before she says, "You shouldn't eat food off of other people's plates. My mom says it's rude."

"Where I come from," Faith speaks with her mouth full – another thing Dawn's mom says is rude. "Only way to _get_ food is to eat it off of other people's plates."

That makes Dawn wonder where Faith is from, so she asks.

"Boston." Stealing a fry off Dawn's plate, Faith smiles and winks. "It's on the whole other side of the U.S. You look out on the water here, and it's a completely different ocean from the one there."

"That's cool," says Dawn, eating up her fries so the other girl won't eat any more of them. "Does everyone in Boston talk like you do?"

"Like I do?"

"Yeah. Like, 'whole oth-uh side-a the U.S.'"

Faith laughs hard and nods her head before Buffy and her mom come back in and Dawn gets ignored again.

_**-:-:-:-**_

The second time Dawn ever hangs out with Faith, she decides she's the coolest person ever. Except maybe for Xander.

It's before the "falling out" debacle that Dawn'll hear next to nothing about and only happens because Dawn's mom tries to get Buffy to watch her after school tomorrow and Buffy refuses because she's already got plans with Xander and Willow. Faith's there at the time – picking up Buffy to go patrolling through some cemetery or other – and stops the inevitable fight about family and responsibility by volunteering to take Dawn out shopping with her that day. Dawn's mom thinks it's a great idea, and Buffy almost objects before deciding not to.

So the next day, when Faith comes to pick Dawn up from school wearing leather pants and a wife-beater and everyone wonders who she is and why she's there, Dawn feels like the coolest kid in the sixth grade.

But it isn't until Faith gives Dawn a piggy-back ride the whole walk to the mall that Dawn really decides she likes the crazy slayer from Boston.

When they get there, Faith tells Dawn that they have a mission to accomplish because she's going to the Sunnydale High homecoming dance with Buffy and needs a dress. Something cool but cheap. They spend a whole lot of time looking through all the stores before they find something black enough and cheap enough that Faith's willing to buy it.

She pays for it using almost all one dollar bills, and when Dawn asks her why, she doesn't look her in the eye.

"'Cause it makes me feel richer than I really am. You know, having all these bills," she explains. It's so obvious to Dawn that she's lying, but for some reason she doesn't think it would be a good idea to call her out on it. She changes the subject before Dawn's able to, anyway. "Got something for you, Dawnie," she smiles.

"You did? What? When?" Because the homecoming dress is the first thing Faith's bought this whole time.

Faith holds out her fist, and Dawn has to stare at it before she realizes and bumps her own fist against it. The hand opens and a silver chain hangs from the fingers, looping letters spelling _Dawn_ dangling from its end. "Saw you admiring it earlier."

"Wow." Dawn takes it from her hand and runs her thumb over the silver letters. "I didn't even see you buy it."

Faith shrugs. "That's because I didn't. I nabbed it when no one was looking."

"That is so cool!" Buffy would never have the guts to do something like that, even during the brief time that she doesn't like to talk about when their mom kicked her out and she lived all by herself in L.A. "Can you teach me how?"

"Sure. But you've gotta remember something." Dawn nods eagerly. "Something like this is a party trick – you don't do it unless you've gotta or you're trying to impress someone. Got it?"

Looking closely at the necklace between her fingertips, Dawn agrees. "Sure. Yeah."

And when Dawn's leaving one of the stores with a tube of smuggled lip gloss in her jeans pocket, Faith thinks to add another condition:

"Don't tell your mom and sister about this, 'kay?"

_**-:-:-:-**_

In Dawn's social studies class, she hears about the city of Boston and sees a couple of pictures from some battle fought there – with people wearing the stuffy old clothes of a hundred years ago and with lopsided cobblestones and shiny black boots collecting flakes of white on their toes and under their heels. She's only ever seen snow in pictures and on television, so when Faith stands in the doorway to her house shuffling from foot to foot and cradling some misshapen boxes badly wrapped with newspaper, she pounces.

"Hey, Faith," she greets. The clear ring of her voice cuts through the awkward tension she can actually feel gathering between her sister and her sister's maybe-the-coolest-person-ever girl-she-went-to-homecoming-with. Her mom says the two of them had a "falling out" recently, and Dawn's not really sure what she means by that, but it doesn't really matter to her anyways.

"Hey, brat." Faith waves a little and gives Dawn a smirk that tells her she doesn't mean to be mean, calling her _brat._

"Does it snow in Boston? Like, white Christmases?"

Stepping inside, Faith hands Buffy the newspaper boxes and mumbles something about trees and sharpies. And when Buffy goes into the other room to drop them under the Christmas tree that's straddling the space between the couch and the hearth, she crouches on her haunches – pulling roughly at her skirt to stop it from riding up – and says to Dawn, "Yeah, I guess you could say it snows back there. Usually, there isn't much on Christmas, and most of the time it's jus' slushy and nasty from people trampling over it. Plus, it's gotta be cold as hell first…"

Dawn always thought hell was hot, but she doesn't interrupt.

"… But, uh, yeah. There's snow. I used to go up on the roof of the apartment building my ma and I lived in and…" Her eyes go a million miles away until she yanks them back to Dawn's face. "It isn't so easy to get roof snow dirty."

Of course that's when Buffy walks in, huffing a little and crinkling her eyebrows together when she sees Dawn and Faith practically kneeling across from each other in the foyer with the front door wide open. She tells Faith that Angel is in trouble – which makes both of them scowl for different reasons – and that she needs Faith to watch Dawn while she's gone.

Dawn snorts. As if her mom isn't just in the other room. As if Dawn isn't old enough to take care of herself.

"Yeah, sure, B," Faith says. "Little D and I'll have some prime time. Braid each other's hair or some other shit."

And then Buffy's gone without even making a comment about corrupting Dawn – which Faith has already technically done – or the likelihood that anyone'll actually do any hair braiding.

Which Faith actually lets her do.

Her hair is prettier than Dawn's, with the curls that Buffy and her mom have that Dawn's always been jealous of, and when Dawn gathers it up in her hands and starts brushing through it, she doesn't even ask about the rough white circles in the skin on the back of Faith's neck.

"How come you're so nice to me?" she asks instead. Sure, Xander and Willow are nice too, but only because they're Buffy's friends. Mostly, they ignore her and sometimes treat her like she's four.

"'Cause," says Faith. "You and me, we've got a lot in common."

"Like what?"

"You ever heard someone tell you they're gonna party from dusk 'til dawn? Or to be back before dawn? Or that things are always darkest before the dawn?" She turns a little – not enough to mess up Dawn's braiding – and smirks. Dawn knows where this is going.

"How about you?" she cajoles. "Do people ever tell you that they have faith in you? Or to find the faith?"

They laugh. And when it snows for the first time in Dawn's life, she forgets all about the newspaper boxes under the tree or the fact that there aren't any boxes for Faith.

_**-:-:-:-**_

Dawn makes sure not to tell anybody about the last time she sees Faith before the older girl barrels into her home with a knife because she knows her mom and Buffy - who is way scarier – would be supremely ticked off if they found out she left the house after dark.

Not that Dawn ever actually goes anywhere – just into the backyard, her socks soaking up all the dew that accumulates in the grass despite the fact that nothing but sun has fallen from the sky since Christmas.

She's drawn out by the sound of something breaking on the back steps, followed by a stream of unintelligible curses drawn out in a husky, feminine voice. Dawn's mom's always been a heavy sleeper, and Buffy's still out doing whatever people do after Prom, so Dawn takes it upon herself to check the backyard. Although – of course – she doesn't dare step outside until she's sure it's not some monster or demon lurking in the dark in wait. Because you never know.

But it's nothing but a broken flower pot and Faith, who she barely recognizes at first. She must have straightened her hair, and the clothes that Buffy's always called _the white trash ensemble_ has been replaced with what Buffy would probably call _skankerific_. There's a smell around her that Dawn doesn't recognize at first.

"Faith?"

"Hey, Dawnie." As she moves into the light, Dawn can tell that the makeup around her eyes is darker than usual and looks less like the cheap, nabbed-it-from-the-corner-drugstore stuff that she normally wears and more like the quality stuff her mom gets – if not applied more generously. "Whatcha doin' up in th' middle of the night?"

Dawn thinks that maybe the better question is what Faith is doing in her backyard knocking over flower pots at two in the morning, but she just stares. Faith always talks like she doesn't care what she's saying, but—

"Are you drunk?" Dawn blurts out, not even sure where the words are coming from.

Faith blinks hard. "No way."

"You're too young to drink." It's a statement and a question at the same time, because Dawn knows Faith's around Buffy's age but also knows that Angel is like, two hundred fifty and only looks like, twenty.

"Damn straight."

"So you're not drunk?"

"Hell no. I don't get drunk," Faith says, sounding like a drunk. "I've got… constitution."

And that's when Dawn recognizes the smell coming off her and knows she's lying. Badly. "You smell like my mom's vodka." Kind of like rubbing alcohol too, but Dawn heard somewhere that drinking that stuff makes you go blind, and she'd rather not put ideas in drunk-Faith's head.

"Your mom's got vodka? _Alright Mrs. S_." Dawn knows that Faith likes her mom a lot, and sometimes she gets the feeling – besides the fact that she calls her _Mrs. S_ – that maybe Faith likes to pretend that Dawn's mom is her mom too. "What type of vodka?"

"I don't know!" Dawn didn't even know there _were_ different types of vodka. "What're you doing here?"

"You know, little D," Faith mumbles. She drops down so that she's sitting on the back steps, propped up against the banister. "We've got a lot in common, you and me. You couldn't go to that dance either. Heck, neither of us even goes to that sissy, lily-white high school. And we've always gotta play second fiddle to prim and prissy, mile-long-stick-up-my-ass _Buffy_. I mean _damn_," she sighs. A hand reaches up and clumsily pulls Dawn to sit beside her. "Everyone's got to be ready to do everything for _Princess Buffy_ at the drop of a hat, and she won't even give us the time of day."

Dawn wants to say something, but she isn't sure what, especially since she always says the same thing… if not with nicer words.

It only gets worse when Faith starts to cry.

"I messed up… big. I can't… take back what I did. I don't know if I even… Is it bad that I don't_ want _to take it back? I feel like he actually cares about me, you know? I mean, I'm not stupid; I know he just wants me to do stuff for him. It's just… I can count how many people care about me on one hand. Less than one hand. I can count how many people care about me on two fingers, and one of 'em's me."

She holds up her fingers like a backwards peace sign. Later, Spike will tell Dawn that it's an obscene hand gesture where he's from, and Dawn will wonder if Faith does that on purpose. Later, she'll learn that the _he_ that Faith's talking about is a crooked politician with a receding hairline that wants to take over Sunnydale in the form of a giant snake.

But right now – in this moment – she reaches across the gap between them and forces one of Faith's curled fingers straight. She holds it up until she's sure Faith is going to keep it that way, then taps it three times.

"That's me," she says.

_**-:-:-:-**_

"You move, your mom'll be trying to clean you outta the carpet for the next decade."

Dawn is thirteen and old enough to know that the desperate look in Faith's eyes means that she's serious about sinking the blade in her hand into Dawn's intestinal tract if Dawn so much as blinks the wrong way. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her mom still knocked out on her bed, a bruise rapidly blooming on her brow, and she can feel her legs twitching in a spastic jig. She swallows hard and tries to look at Faith's feral eyes and bared teeth, but her gaze won't move from the delicate appearance of her mom's unconscious form.

"It doesn't hurt as bad when it first sinks in," Faith whispers. Her face is jammed beside Dawn's ear where Dawn can hear her erratic breathing, feel the cold point of the knife through her shirt. "It's like making toast, except the knife's sharper and your gut's the butter." So much of Dawn's focus is on the spot where metal meets her body that she swears she can feel the threads of her shirt split and the layers of her skin give way to the sharp edge. Faith only nicks her enough to bleed a little, but Dawn still gasps aloud and whimpers.

"C'mon, Dawnie. This is how it works, isn't it? You get to know someone. You trust 'em, give 'em a little bit of yourself that you can't take back, and then they stab you through." She backs away a little, her strong arm still pinning Dawn to the wall. The knife swings jerkily in her clenched fist, and Dawn feels her teeth trying to clench just as hard. "Right? That's how it works, _right_?"

"No, it's not."

They both turn. Faith lets Dawn go.

"Well, look who's finally graced us with her presence," says Faith. Dawn slides down the wall and curls in on herself, partly to stop her from bleeding and partly to stop her from running and leaving her mom behind. "Mrs. S back from her trip to the land of unconsciousness." Prowling towards the bed, Faith smirks. "Tell me. Was it as good for you as it was for me?"

"Doubt it," Dawn's mom replies, playing along. "I'm not quite as experienced as you."

Faith eyes momentarily widen; then she cackles. "_Damn_, Mrs. S. I like seeing a sharp tongue on an older woman. Feels like we're bridging some sorta generational gap here." The tip of her knife's stained with Dawn's blood, and when Faith sways it between her and Dawn's mom, Dawn's mom flinches backward just a little bit. Faith's responding grin is feral. "But there's an expression about bark and bite…"

"Trust me." Dawn's mom's eyes are slits and her voice is steel. "I bite."

Still brandishing the knife in Dawn's mom's general direction, Faith turns to the bureau and starts rummaging through the supply of makeup spread out on its surface. "Kinky," she says. She wriggles a tube of lipstick in her hand. "And you got lipstick called _harlot_ too." The top pops off, and Faith smears some over her lips. She pauses for just a second, staring at the photograph stuck between the glass of the mirror – of Dawn and Buffy and their mom and dad – before plucking it off and crumpling it up. "Really makes me wonder why your _hubby_ did the horizontal mambo with the closest bimbo he could find."

Dawn's mom stays silent, and Dawn can see the color leave her lips as she presses them tight together.

Faith grins wide, knowing she's drawn blood from both of them now. "Let me guess: _You're never going to get away with this._"

"You won't."

"Sorry, Dawnie-Dawn," says Faith. "Orange isn't my color." She holds the knife up close against her face, as if inspecting the tiny stain of Dawn's blood at its end. "Red might be, though."

_**-:-:-:-**_

"I remember the brat?" Faith murmurs. Angel can see something melancholy and far too familiar in her eyes. "Wish I didn't."


End file.
